


Black hole blues

by Winny



Series: Of black seas and blue skies [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst, Confusing timeline changes, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, I swear that's not a self-indulgent thing, M/M, No I won't add it to the relationship tags fuck that, Post-Wano Arc (One Piece), Really mild LawLu cuz I don't ship it but somehow ended up adding it into the story, Time Travel, Vinsmoke Sanji with black hair, everything else is just made up, spoilers till 946 or so, uh kinda
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 16:22:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19908667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winny/pseuds/Winny
Summary: After they defeat Kaido, things with Big Mom settle down and the Strawhats have already had their traditional monstrously long party to celebrate it all, Sanji starts having weird dreams that lead to a catastrophic set of events. Now that everything’s changed and kindness is gone, will they be able to bring their cook back to them?Or, that one story in which someone travels back in time and things go downhill from there.





	Black hole blues

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s context: they partied for a week in Wano after defeating Kaido and forming a sort of alliance with Big Mom, Zoro and Sanji talked about the WCI incident and they sorted things out at Tonoyasu’s place (you know, O-Toko’s dad). That’s all you need to know to read this, but the first part of this series is a one-shot about that if you want to take a look at it.
> 
> This story will have a slow start since the plot is so Fucking Complicated(tm), but don't worry! I'll get to the good stuff soon enough.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

* * *

Sanji woke up and stood immediately. Cold sweat running from his nape to his back, his whole body shuddered. It took him a while to place himself in time and space again, the images of the dream he had had still burning in his retinas, and remember what he’d been doing before letting himself fall asleep.

_Ah, that’s right,_ he thought, looking down and finding a jumble of messy green strands sleeping next to him in an awkward position, with his back to the wall, legs crossed and —now that Sanji moved and wasn’t supporting his weight anymore— his neck bent a little too much for it to be comfortable. He sighed, calming down a little just by seeing him there. The morning sunlight bathed his body almost completely, making the ends of his hair look like a clearing and the sharp edges of his face feel like a piece of art painted with the most care in the world— and he was breathtaking, somehow.

That’s how Sanji saw it, at least. He knew it was a truly rare thing for the swordsman to be sleeping so soundly instead of making a lot of noises and snoring like hell— not to mention that he still hadn’t woken up even though his sleep was normally very light, so he took in the sight and indulged himself in the implications. He must feel _real_ comfortable with him by his side, and Sanji would totally tease him for it later. For now, though, he smiled and sat there, looking at Zoro’s sleeping figure, lost in thought and trying to ease his still racing heart.

He dreamt about the day he realized his mother was never coming back, and that all he had left was a father who hated him and siblings who wanted to trade his life for hers.

Even though he did think about his mother every now and then, he always looked back on the good memories he had of her, rather than the bad ones. He was reminded of her whenever Nami’s smile brightened a room, whenever he made a particularly good dish and thought it’d be nice for her to be there to taste it, whenever he pondered about how much he would like for her to meet his nakama and the people who raised him, whenever Brook played a song they used to listen to when he was a kid, whenever someone complimented his food, whenever Chopper reassured them that no one was in mortal danger, whenever he wished he could introduce her to the man he loved; and sometimes, on good days, when he looked at himself in the mirror. He remembered all that was good about her, essentially, when he felt the happiest. That’s how she would like to stay in his heart, he knew.

So, yes. It was kind of strange for him to dream about her death, especially when he had fallen asleep feeling as happy as he had the previous night. However, he reasoned, learning that your mother died for your sake had to be enough to make some bitter memories resurface. He hadn’t let himself even think about what Reiju confessed to him at Whole Cake Island ever since arriving at Wano, since he knew it would definitely distract him from what needed to be done. And later he had been too preoccupied with his and Zoro’s relationship to be able to sleep much at all, so —he guessed— his brain had taken his low guard for the first time in weeks to deliver a clear message to him: _it’s your fault, you will not escape that fact even if you fight a thousand fights and Reiju tells a thousand lies. It’s your fault that mother died._

Sanji grabbed his head, panting and feeling the sudden _need_ of smoking a cigarette. He took one from his clothes and lighted it quietly, a silent battle occupying all the corners of his mind. _No, Reiju said mother had no regrets about her death. It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault._

_You sure about that?_ He still recalled it all perfectly. _She took that drug for you, and now you’re alive and she’s dead._ The huge empty bed. _No, that’s not right._ The grey clouds. _What isn’t? You should’ve just followed your fate, so that she could live._ The wooden casket with golden butterflies —his mother’s favorites— decorating it. _No, she didn’t want that for me. So she wanted to die?_ The white flowers that resembled her pale skin.

_It’s not my fault._

The blue dress she wore when she last told him she loved him.

_It’s your fault._

“Cook?” he heard, and suddenly the cold rain drenching his clothes at the funeral dried up and the white noise in his head disappeared. “You okay?”

_Ah._ He looked up, a blank expression in his eyes, meeting with a worried look on Zoro’s face.

“Ah,” he mused, and immediately after shook his head out of ocher butterflies, marble flowers and cruel thoughts. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah… I was just thinking of something. Yeah. Don’t worry.”

Zoro didn’t seem convinced at all, but knew better than to pressure him into speaking about whatever it was that bothered him. He understood Sanji a lot, after all. So not now, not yet. Instead, he aimed for him to return to normal. “Did you have a bad dream, shit cook? Need me to protect you from any scary little monsters?”

“What did you say, stupid marimo?! I don’t want to hear that from someone who can’t even sleep quietly unless he has someone by his side!”

“Huuuuh?!”

_Yeah,_ he thought. Things would be fine as long as everything remained like this.

* * *

Things were not fine.

Sanji had woken up, again, breathing heavily and with sweat making his whole body feel gross and uncomfortable. He couldn’t see anything past the dim light of the moon, gently kissing the room he and his male crewmates were sleeping in —courtesy of Wano’s locals—, and it took his eyes a couple of minutes to get used to the dark enough for faint shapes to become visible. The furniture’s borderlines, Usopp and Chopper’s chests going up and down slowly at their light snoring’s rhythm, Franky’s characteristic metallic arms reflecting the light and Brook’s bones kind of standing out, as they always did. There were a few people missing but, honestly, Sanji couldn’t bring himself to even think about that right now.

This time, he dreamt about a woman he’d never met. She had beautiful long hair and deep aquamarine eyes, and she was crying. He remembers reaching out to her in the middle of the mist they were in, trying to somehow ease her worries, to understand what was going on so that he could help. She seemed to sense his intentions, because she showed him a sweet smile through her overflowing tears.

_“I’m sure your mother loved you very much,”_ she muttered, her voice soft and distant, even though she was right there in front of him. _“You remind me of my children, brave to the point it hurts…”_ She approached him and caressed his cheek in such a loving way it made him blush. _“If you promise to never let them feel what you feel, I’ll help you.”_

Sanji must have made a pretty obvious confused face, because she chuckled before talking again. _“I cannot interfere with anything that I interacted with when I was alive. However, if it’s you… I think you, I can help.”_ A sad smile adorned her features, and God, she truly was gorgeous. _“We’ve never met, after all.”_ He tried to talk, to ask her what in the world she was talking about, but his throat felt so impossibly dry that he couldn’t even muse a sound. She sounded like she could tell what he was thinking, though, as she resumed her monologue. _“You’re beyond the veil, dearie. Living things cannot function correctly in here. A plant would stop blooming, an animal stop snarling, and humans stop talking.”_

The mist wavered, and her smile grew sadder. _“I can’t stay here much longer. I’m sorry but please, tell them. Tell them I’m watching over them, tell them I love them, tell them they should be proud of who they became and that I’m happy they’re alive, even if I can’t be there with them.”_

‘Who?’, he desperately wanted to ask, but —unsurprisingly—, no words came out of his mouth. She closed her eyes and, just like that, vanished without ever having stopped crying. At last, with a feeling of crude frustration, he woke up.

So there was him again, fully awake, wondering what the hell was up with that weird dream, and moseying along the house. In the morning, the Strawhats had all agreed to stay in Wano for a few more days after the party ended, since they hadn’t repaired the damages the Sunny received in Whole Cake Island yet (Franky’s face was a poem then he discovered the state of the ship, and was really upset about the whole alliance thing with Big Mom after that). The Heart Pirates, on the other hand, since the objective of defeating Kaido was already fulfilled, told them they were only staying one more night before setting sail— same as the Kidd Pirates, that only stayed all this time because Killer wanted to celebrate and Kidd couldn’t really bring himself to deny him after everything he had been through this time around. The minks, nonetheless, would stay and help everyone reconstruct the place.

Sanji walked past the other crews' bedrooms and the women’s chambers without acknowledging them with so much as a single glance, so deep in his thoughts he didn’t even pay attention to where he was heading. Eventually he reached an open area filled with short bushes and a couple of thin, long trees. A large lake presented itself as the main attraction of the garden, with rocks of different sizes at its borders and water so clean you could see the moon reflected as clear and mighty as if it was right there, dancing underwater with little tadpoles and technicolor fish.

“Aww, you really have to go now, Torao?” he heard before he saw Luffy whining, not giving much of a shit that Kidd and his crew walked past them before disappearing into the shadows of the hall. He only granted a proper goodbye to Killer, the one person in that ship that he actually liked, so Sanji guessed he had no further business with them other than the promise he and Kidd had made during the day of ‘absolutely not letting the other find the One Piece before them’ (and also of one day having the proper fight they’ve been unable to pull since they’d been both pretty occupied trying not to die). All rather standard for pirates of the likes of them, to be honest. “Can’t you stay with us a little longer?”

Huh, so they were leaving already. He registered that information in slow motion, his brain still too filled with a sense of uncertainty and uncapable of completely returning to the real world. Nevertheless, he instinctually felt something approaching him, and stopped it from reaching the end of his sleeves with impressive speed. He gazed down and discovered Nami sitting with Zoro, who had a bottle of sake between his legs, both of them half hidden behind a bush. Sanji let go of her hand immediately —of course— and raised a brow, looking questioningly at the swordsman and getting only a shrug as an answer. The annoyed feeling got him to roll his eyes and finally snap out of his stupor, just before Nami pulled again at his clothes prompting him to sit beside her. He, naturally, followed her wishes, even if he didn’t quite know what was going on.

“Are you okay, Sanji-kun?” she asked, sweet as ever. “We’ve been trying to get your attention since you came here, but you seemed kind of lost.”

“Ah,” he whispered, because apparently that was always his first reaction when it came to this. “Don’t worry, Nami-swan. The only person that can get lost here is that stupid marimo,” he joked, hoping she would drop the subject. She was about to open her mouth again, though, when Law’s voice echoed through the garden.

“I’ve already told you, Strawhat-ya. You don’t need me anymore because you formed an alliance with Big Mom.”

“I didn’t form any alliance with her!” Luffy retorted. “I still want to beat her ass! She only said she’d help Chopper if he ever got in trouble!”

“And who exactly is Tony-ya’s captain, Strawhat-ya?”

Luffy seemed to have nothing to say, for once, and it was in that short moment that Sanji realized Zoro hadn’t stopped staring at him since the minute he showed up— but he didn’t have the time to say anything since Luffy began talking again. “But I don’t want you to go!”

Nami grabbed Zoro’s arm at that, clearly interested, making them break eye contact. Sanji silently thanked her, he wasn’t up to bear any scrutiny right now.

“I don’t really want to part ways with you, either,” he heard Law mutter, and had to look back to make sure it _was_ him who said that. So this is why Nami wanted to hide. “Nonetheless, our alliance’s objective is completed. We defeated Kaido. We’re back to being enemies now.”

“Yeah, I know it!” Luffy said, complaint evident in his voice. “But I still don’t want you to go, so nevermind that!”

Zoro and Sanji chuckled at the same time that Law smiled and Nami shook her head, grinning. In the end they all knew how irrational Luffy could be, and they had learned to see that part of him with fondness a long time ago. He had grown pretty attached to the other captain, and while this was to be expected from a guy like him, a few of the canniest members of the crew couldn’t help but wonder if, maybe, there was something more to it than just that.

“We need to go on our own adventures, Strawhat-ya,” Law stated prior to fixing Luffy’s kimono, a real simple gesture, but it made Sanji feel like he was interrupting something. “But we will meet again, I’m sure of it.”

He turned his head to look at Nami, wanting to urge her to go away from there already, but instead of finding brown eyes he was met with a single black one. “She’s just leaving,” his owner said. And certainly, when he turned again, he saw her standing up in the hallway he’d came from and smirking with a finger on her lips, signaling him not to make any noises. Then, she walked away.

Sanji pursed his lips and took Zoro’s hand, soundlessly guiding him away from the garden and into the house. He didn’t stop walking until they were at the front entrance of the building, and only then did he let go of him. He leaned into a pillar and stared at the worn out city, the furious battle still evident in every corner, before hearing his partner sit on the ground with a quiet _thump._

“Are you gonna tell me what’s going on with you?” Sanji sighed, because of course Zoro would just bluntly ask about it. There wasn’t much secrecy when it came to him, after all. He was an honest and straightforward person, almost as much as Luffy was. Maybe that’s why they got along so well.

After a quick deliberation with himself, he budged. If it was just him, he could talk about it. But, first, “it’s stupid.”

“I don’t care if it is.”

And there was a certain ring to his voice that reassured him that no, it didn’t matter. Not to him, at least, as long as Sanji would just tell him what was wrong so he could he could help him. So he could _know._

“I had a couple of dreams… uh, nightmares, I guess,” he waited for a sassy remark, an eyebrow to raise, anything that could make him think he was being ridiculous to worry about something so trivial, but nothing happened. _Of course,_ he thought. “When we were in Tonoyasu’s place, I dreamt about my mother’s funeral.” At that, he did get a reaction. Zoro frowned, finally averting his gaze from the half-in-ruins city and placing it in him. “Did someone fill you in the details of the Germa 66’s… unusual traits?”

The swordsman pondered about it for a moment before answering. “They’re some sort of superhuman beings, right? Like they can drink poison, electrocute people with their hands and stuff.” He paused. “But you can’t do those things.”

He chuckled. “No, I can’t. My mother made sure of it.” He stopped, and Zoro didn’t understand why someone wouldn’t want their kid to have superhuman strength, but didn’t interrupt. “You’re probably wondering who wouldn’t want their child to have superhuman strength, aren’t you?” At Zoro’s busted expression, Sanji laughed. “The Vinsmokes don’t have any empathy, that’s why. Judge wanted them to be human weapons only, so he made my mother go through genetic enhancement surgery on us when we were still inside the womb.” He let the strange information about his conception sink in for a little while, and continued talking. “That resulted in those assholes’ toughness, and I’d never really understood why I was so different from them, but… Reiju told me, when we were at Whole Cake Island. My mother took a drug she developed in the hopes we would turn out normal without Judge ever knowing about it. That’s why I’m ordinary compared to them.”

Zoro smirked. “Ordinary? You?” He earned a ‘you know what I mean’ look from Sanji, and stood up to be by his side. “So? What’s your mom being amazing got to do with your nightmare?”

The blonde nudged him, and smiled for an instant. The moment was gone in a flash second, though, and soon he had a grim look on his face again. “She died because of that drug.”

He left out of the story the bit about his devastating guilt, but Zoro didn’t have to be as sharp as Robin to guess that part.

“You know it’s not your fault.” Sanji lifted one corner of his lips and huffed, clearly disagreeing but knowing better than to argue about something that had the potential to make him cry. He didn’t like crying.

“Anyway,” he started talking again, so that his comrade would shut up about the things he knew he wanted to say to him. “The second dream was just now, and for this one I have absolutely no clue what happened or why I dreamt it.” He recapitulated it in his mind, and carried on. “It was about this really gorgeous woman— and I know all women are gorgeous, but this one was… Her eyes were big and turquoise, and her hair was just…” At Zoro’s disregard, he rolled his eyes and skipped that part. “She _was_ beautiful, okay, shitty moss head? But she was crying. And she looked stunning even then, seriously, she was… ahem.” He cleared his throat. “And she was dead apparently, and knew my mother? Or didn’t know her and that’s why she could ‘help me’ somehow? I don’t know.”

Zoro’s eyebrow twitched like he was trying hard to understand, but couldn’t, so he crossed his arms in a gesture of frustration. “What?”

“I don’t know, for real.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t able to talk, so I couldn’t ask her, but… She told me to tell her children that she loved them, and that she would help me with something if I did. But she never told me their names, and I woke up.”

Well, they were both royally confused now. Zoro opened his mouth to talk, but Sanji cut him before he could say anything. “I know it sounds ridiculous, _I know it,_ but I think I need to find her kids.”

“Of _course_ you want to do what a crying ghost dream chick tells you to do.” He sighed, ready to argue about them not even knowing if she was real or just a product of the cook’s vivid imagination when it came to women, but suddenly untangled his arms and his eye shot open. “Wait, did you say turquoise? That's like blueish-greenish-something right?”

"I'm sometimes surprised at your bruteness."

“Hiyori’s eyes are that color.”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Gosh I do hope I wrote all what I needed to write, since I just finished writing and only read it again once before putting it all here (will I ever post stuff at a normal hour? It's 4am, damnit).
> 
> Anyway, as I told you, this has a slow start! By the next chapter I will get to where I want to get, though. I think. *cross fingers*
> 
> I love you guys, even those of you who come and leave as invisibly as ghosts! Have a good day, y'all. <3
> 
> PD: in the manga, Zoro never adresses Hiyori directly by her name, not even once. That's why I don't know if he calls her Hiyori, Komurasaki, or simply "woman" because he's that much of a brute, but I decided to simply go by Hiyori since it's easier that way. I may change it if by the next couple of chapters he adresses her by /some/ kind of name, though.


End file.
